"Xtreme Reading" is a supplemental literacy curriculum designed to improve the literacy skills of struggling students in grades 6 to 12. The curriculum is primarily designed to help students improve their vocabulary, decoding, fluency, and reading comprehension skills. To ensure a productive learning environment, students initially learn…

To improve reading achievement, teachers must ensure students actively engage in productive and meaningful reading tasks. Students with an established history of reading difficulty--including those with reading disabilities--may, over time, develop behaviors for passive and active avoidance of reading tasks. The current study explored the effects…

Grappling with difficult texts can make readers feel as though they're crashing a party that wasn't meant for them. They don't know the occasion. They don't know the guests. They have a hard time fitting in. In this article, Thomas Newkirk suggests several reasons why students find texts difficult to understand. Students may be…

When literacy instruction uses books selected on the basis of thematic content, it can foster the attainment of literacy goals while developing readers' knowledge. This paper provides a rationale for the use of thematically-related texts in literacy instruction and describes some thematic units that have been a part of literacy intervention…

The authors describe a research-based method to increase students' reading fluency. The method is called Read Two Impress, which is derived from the Neurological Impress Method and the method of repeated readings. The authors provide step-by-step procedures to effectively implement the reading fluency intervention. Previous research indicates that…

Recent data on reading achievement indicates that a majority of young students are reading below proficiency. However, current research has shown that providing students with quality, research-based reading instruction can help prevent many reading difficulties. Through the use of core reading programs, teachers have tools available to be able to…

For students with persistent reading difficulties, research suggests one of the most effective ways to intensify interventions is to individualize instruction through use of performance data--a process known as data-based decision making (DBDM). This article reports a synthesis and meta-analysis of studies of reading interventions containing DBDM…

Student motivation is a necessary catalyst for reading achievement; therefore, educators need to determine how to motivate reluctant readers, including students reading below grade level. Our qualitative study begins to address this challenge by reporting what struggling adolescents and their teacher at 1 urban middle school discussed about their…

The use of documents to perform tasks is a continuous task demand in the current knowledge-based society that involves making a series of decisions to self-regulate the use of text information. Low-skilled comprehenders have serious problems monitoring and self-regulating their decisions in these task-oriented reading situations, which has a…

This randomized study evaluated two evidence-based reading interventions with 121 middle school students who presented with reading fluency deficits. One intervention was teacher-directed and utilized numerous evidence-based strategies; the other intervention, the Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies for Small Groups Program, provided a…

Reading is at the heart of education and it is the basic skill upon which all others are built. Reading difficulties underlie much of the differences in academic achievement between students with specific learning disabilities in reading and non-disabled students; addressing these challenges when children are young is the key for long-term success…

Many students struggle to understand what they read. The purpose of my study was to determine the relationship between teachers' instruction of three processes believed to help readers to become more engaged (purpose setting, questioning, and predicting), students' use of these engaged reader processes, and students' comprehension development. My…

This work investigates in how far gamification and micro-learning, implemented by the novel technologies H5P and xAPI, are suitable to increase the motivation and learning performance of pupils with cognitive and behavioral challenges. The context for the field trials is the Norwegian SOL framework (short for Systematic Observation of Reading) in…

The author argues that to truly help young students who struggle with reading and writing--including those with identified disabilities or conditions that effect building literacy--teachers should avoid the approach of focusing on a student's deficits and creating labels for him or her (dyslexic, English language learner, and so on). A rush to…

If we want to move children from struggling to read to being proficient readers, we must address the disparate ways that teachers respond to readers with varying abilities. Restorative practices, akin to restorative justice, build relationships, make connections, and foster a reader's sense of ownership and empowerment. What would happen if…